I came across anarchism too late in life to start calling myself an anarchist. At earlier stages I’d enjoyed attaching labels to myself, like ‘leftist’, or ‘Arab’, or ‘Muslim’. I was never a great believer in any of them, but I tried.

An uncalled-for and upsetting incident took place at the Anarchist Bookfair in London on 29 October 2016. Several people claiming to represent the Kurdish people or the Rojava Revolution shut down an event attended by speakers Leila Al Shami, Robin Yassin Kassab and Shiar Neyo about the situation in Syria.

This week we bring you nihilistic news from the climate front plus an update on the revolt in Turkey following the suicide bombing of Rojava supporters. Plus a turkish comrade gives us an in depth look at the political landscape in the region.

Murray Bookchin – born to Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City in 1921 – was introduced to radical politics at the age of nine when he joined the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth organization. This would be the start of his ‘life on the left’ in which he would turn from Stalinism to Trotskyism in the years running up to World War II before defining himself as an anarchist in the late 1950s and eventually identifying as a ‘communalist’ or ‘libertarian municipalist’ after the introduction of the idea of social ecology.